Titania
Titania is a comic book character that first appeared in Marvel Super-Heroes Secret Wars #3
Titania is a superhuman powerhouse and arch-enemy of the She-Hulk.
Fictional character biography
Titania is introduced in Marvel Super Heroes Secret Wars # 3, but details of her early life are fleshed out in She-Hulk (vol. 1) #10 (2004), an issue which centered around depicting her backstory in flashback.
Born prematurely in a suburb of Denver, Colorado, Mary MacPherran grew up scrawny and short-statured, inspiring a popular girl at school, Vanessa Ashwood, to nickname her "Skeeter" (a slang word for mosquito). As a high school senior, she worked as a salesclerk alongside her only other friend, an often shy, overweight girl named Marsha Rosenberg. Consistently and sadistically mocked and humiliated since childhood by the wealthy, popular, conceited, and immensely spoiled Vanessa and her social clique, while personally eventually being forced to take menial jobs just to survive, Mary grew resentful and bitter over her lack of any quality of existence, and fantasized about gaining super powers to become admired, and exact retribution on her tormentors.
After the second Spider-Woman (Julia Carpenter) makes one of her early appearances in their town, Marsha remarks that the new superheroine's reddish-blonde hair color matches Mary's. Mary then falsely confides to her friend that she is secretly Spider-Woman. Shortly afterward, Mary was invited to a fancy party at Vanessa's house, where she was surprised to find that her newfound popularity is due to Marsha spreading around the false Spider-Woman rumor.
However, in the middle of the party, their section of Denver was torn from Earth and became part of the composite planet Battleworld, created by the Beyonder as a stage for a selected group of superheroes and supervillains to battle each other. When the real Spider-Woman arrives on the scene to save the guests from a collapsing structure, the now-enraged Vanessa and her guests turn on Mary and Marsha, chasing them into the forests of Battleworld.
Scared and exhausted, the two girls are found by Doctor Doom, who was in need of further metahuman operatives to further his ambitions. Mary and Marsha both agree to Doom's offer of power in exchange for serving in his army of supervillains.
Secret Wars
The changes were not only physical, but mental in nature. Where Mary MacPherran had been small and timid, the newly-named Titania, so called because of strength like a titan, was proud, and confident, perhaps to extremes. No sooner had Volcana melted machinery into a large pile of red-hot slag, than Titania picked it up, boldly ignoring the slight possibility of injury, and hurled it through the wall; soon after, she challenged Carl "Crusher" Creel, the Absorbing Man, to a fight which he refused, reasoning that he had "nothing to prove...to a dame."
Titania began to work for Doom in earnest, battling the superheroes, with her most impressive conquest being Jennifer Walters, the She-Hulk; she did not know it, but this would be the beginning of a long rivalry.
Yet, when the heroes later stormed Doombase to rescue She-Hulk, Titania tried to face up against veteran super-hero Spider-Man; despite her massive strength and durability advantages, Spider-Man's highly-increased speed, agility, and long experience against more powerful foes, allowed him to not only dodge her attacks, but to be able to attack her with impunity, culminating in throwing her through an exterior wall. During this fight, Titania's attitude and newfound arrogance quickly evaporated, giving way to what Spider-Man/Shooter mockingly called the "whining little wimp-ette" - it was clear that the arrogance could only last while Titania had the upper hand, otherwise a reversion to her previous character would occur. Mindful of this beating, Titania would harbor a fear of Spider-Man for some time.
After her run-in with Spider-Man, a previously hinted-at relationship between the Absorbing Man and Titania began; Titania seemed fairly dependent on Creel at this point. Once Owen Reece, the Molecule Man, managed to seal off the chunk of Denver, and begin to navigate it back to Earth, Creel and MacPherran revealed that they were done with Doom and his war, and simply wanted to go home.
Back to Earth
The villain couple received another assignment from the Masters: to kill Hercules, who had been gravely injured previously by the Masters, and was in hospital. Yet despite a guard of only Scott Lang (Ant-Man), and Janet Van Dyne (the Wasp), Hercules survived; with Creel stung by insects in human form, and Titania shrunk to the size of Wasp, the villains were easily subdued, with Titania taken to the Vault, a superhuman penitentiary..
Her stay in the Vault was not to last long, however. When Tony Stark, Iron Man, began the Armor Wars, the battle to destroy or disable all enhanced armor types based on stolen Iron Man designs, this inevitably led him to the Guardsmen, The Vault's wardens. The ensuing conflict, while successful from his point of view, created a power failure, allowing Titania and Mister Hyde to escape. While (The Captain) managed to subdue and capture Mister Hyde, his colleague D-Man was unsuccessful in apprehending Titania; when allowed the opportunity for a rematch, D-Man simply let the villainess escape.
Using her newfound freedom, Titania travelled to Washington D.C; losing a succession of battles with She-Hulk, Titania promised to never attack her again, and to return to jail.
Broken out yet again, Titania joined with the Wizard, Klaw, and Hydro-Man, to become the new Frightful Four. Battling the Fantastic Four, the team only won due to help from Professor Gregson Gilbert's creation Dragon Man, and Aron, the Renegade Watcher; in the rematch, the Fantastic Four prevailed, only to have both Fours imprisoned by Aron in suspended animation, using clones of the Fantastic Four to act out adventures he wished to witness. When both teams were freed, Aron chose to witness the dreams of his clones instead, transporting the Frightful Four back to The Vault, as a service to the Fantastic Four.
However, this stay in The Vault was as permanent as earlier ones - a conspiracy between Loki and the Wizard saw Titania free once more, in Loki's Acts of Vengeance plan. Teaming supervillains to fight enemies not usually their own, Titania was dismayed when Doctor Doom, her partner, told her she would face not She-Hulk, but Spider-Man. Yet Doom managed to stoke her pride and anger, allowing her to overcome her fear and engage Spider-Man; it was unfortunate that at this time, Spider-Man had temporarily bonded with the Uni-Power, making him Captain Universe. This granted him the power to render Titania unconscious in one massive energy discharge; the only benefit of the situation was that Titania lost her fear of Spider-Man.
This time, Titania did not even make it back to The Vault; freed by Graviton, who also collected the Trapster and the Brothers Grimm; all had been humiliated by Spider-Man in the Captain Universe guise. Along with Chameleon and Goliath, they attempted to take revenge, only to fail. Titania, humiliatingly, was defeated by a collision with a speeding bus.
Finding Romance
While Creel made an attempt to live a normal life, Titania went back to robbing jewelry stores; concerned, Creel attempted to "scare her straight", collaborating with Thor in a ploy involving a Guggenheim exhibit. While the appearance of Spider-Man and special police unit Code: Blue complicated matters, ultimately Titania remembered her love for Creel.
Drawn to an AIM convention in Boca Caliente, Titania joined with the Abomination and Gargantua to battle the Town Called Hulk; once this was done, Titania came to her senses somewhat, asking Creel to marry her. The wedding was attended by many supervillains; while the Avengers interrupted the ceremony, they left the couple alone. In their new life, the pair seemed not to be able to stay under the radar, assuming the guises of Thunder Girl and Lightning Bolt in order to hunt Spider-Man for the reward offered by Norman Osborn.
Despite contracting severe skin burns as a result of this escapade, this was not the end of the pair's villainy; committing more robberies, Titania also clashed repeatedly with She-Hulk.
Illness and Recuperation
However, this was not a permanent state of affairs; despite her enhanced durability, Titania contracted a terminal illness: cancer. Without health insurance and no money, she was quickly forced to move from the hospital to an abandoned building. Slowly weakening, but still massively strong, she fought through the illness with the help of doctors provided by Thor; as a result, the Absorbing Man repented to Thor, bowing to the new Lord of Asgard.
However, Titania proved unable to stay away from She-Hulk, and underwent an intense physical regimen to boost her abilities. However, She-Hulk had done so more efficiently, briefly reaching levels almost approaching those of the Hulk himself. Battered and inadvertently humiliated by her, Titania was offered the chance at revenge after obtaining the Power Gem, one of the legendary Infinity Gems, from its former owner, the former Champion of the Universe, now known as the Fallen One because of his own defeat at the She-Hulk's hands. The Fallen One had agreed to cease using the Power Gem as a condition of his defeat, but was free to gain his own revenge by proxy through Titania. After an initial defeat by the newly-empowered Titania, She-Hulk tricked her into believing that she had killed the Jade Giantess in a second battle; Titania's initial rush of triumph suddenly melted into uncertainty, as she realized that her life now had no meaning or focus without the object of her obsessive hatred. The She-Hulk (in her normal form as Jennifer Walters) then took advantage of Titania's confusion to pluck the Power Gem from the criminal's forehead, and proceeded to use the Gem's power to knock Titania out with a single punch.
Titania was incarcerated in the Lang Memorial Penitentiary, a.k.a. the Pym Experimental Prison #2, a prison in which superhuman inmates are shrunk with Pym particles to less than an inch in height, to reduce both their chances of escape and their threat to guards and the public if they do escape, since inmates can only be returned to their full size by prison technicians or the few others who have access to Pym particles.
In Fantastic Four #547, Titania appears as a member of The Wizard's Frightful Four, battling the Fantastic Four on Saturn's moon, Titan. In She-Hulk (vol. 2) #21, she is shown having been returned to the Pym Experimental Prison. But in the next issue, having escaped (though still shrunken to diminutive size), she is reunited with the Absorbing Man, and clashes again with She-Hulk. Titania is last seen being thrown into the mouth of a shark.
Powers
Titania posses a high level of strength (95-105 tons),which is slight better than She-Hulk (unless she go savage) and posses a high level of stamina,she also posses fantastic endurance (like when Human Torch shoot his fire at her,but she wans't even scratched),however lacks a healing factor.
Mental Instability
Due to her life prior to becoming Titania, Mary has an intense inferiority complex. When she was first introduced during the Secret Wars she went out of her way to prove she was tougher than many of the heroes and villains on Battle World. She took great pride in thrashing the She-Hulk. When she attempted to smash a group of heroes she had her first encounter with Spider-Man. Despite all the power that Doctor Doom granted her she could not manage to hit the wallcrawler. Even a strike that send debris his way did not stop him for long. Ultimately, his speed, strength and taunts were too much for her and he tossed her out of the building sending her crashing into the ground. Her last words before passing out were, "It's not fair".
That defeat left her completely terrified of Spider-Man and any time she came in contact with him (such as during the Acts of Vengeance saga) she would cower in fear. Doom had to use a chip to supress her fear so that she could fight him. Eventually, she was able to overcome this phobia but she has not yet defeated him.
Characteristics
Height:6'7"
Weight: 625 lbs.
Hair: Reddish-Blonde
Eyes: Blue
#7369 in
Power Rank
Rank Game
| Super Name: | Titania |
| Real Name: | Mary McPherran |
| Aliases: |
Mary McPherran Skeeter |
| Publisher: | Marvel Publishing |
| Gender: | Female |
| Character Type: | Human |
| 1st Appearance: | Marvel Super-Heroes Secret Wars #3 |
| Appears in: | 104 issues |
| Birthday: | |
| Died: |
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